1920s saw tourism boom; 2006 sees Tivoli’s doom

Photographed in May 1927, a bevy of beauties shows off the latest swimwear fashions on the lawn of the Tivoli, Biloxi’s newest resort hotel. The Tivoli was one of four hotels that opened on the Mississippi Coast within 60 days in the winter of 1926-27.The new hotels, the Pine Hills north of Pass Christian, Biloxi’s Edgewater Gulf and Tivoli, and the Markham Hotel in Gulfport, quickly filled with the overflow from the popular and older Buena Vista, Great Southern, Riviera, White House, Miramar and Hotel Biloxi.Weeks before the Tivoli’s grand opening on Feb. 19, 1927, the hotel was already booked. Many visitors arrived in time for Mardi Gras, which fell on Feb. 16 that year. With Easter late, the hotel’s winter and summer seasons merged.

That was 79 years ago. The steady thud of the wrecking ball, heard in East Biloxi in recent weeks, was the death knell for the heavily Katrina-damaged Tivoli, which had stood derelict for a number of years. Now only the Markham building remains as the last reminder of those grand hotels built during the halcyon days of the 1920s.

Copyright © 2006 The South Mississippi Sun Herald, All Rights Reserved.